Vintage Londoner with retrocentric tastes. Interested in the uncommon,artistic,cultural and visual life of this old tart of a city and its tawdry glamour. Tinctured with cocktails, swear words and the odd rant. I'm friendly but bolshy and my opinions are honest and sponsor-free. P.R and marketing types please see 'About Me'.
redlegsinsoho@me.com

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

Penhaligons relaunch flagship store in Regent Street.

Let me start by apologising for lack of blog posts recently, paid work got in the way and words for lucre were hard to resist with the festive season fast advancing upon me! Hello to new readers and thank you to those who have persevered!

I used to wine taste
competitively. This was not an excuse for inebriation; I don’t require one of
those although it was sometimes a consequence. Generally the wines were
spat out; the taste swilled from your mouth with water and then blotted out with dry
crackers before ingesting the next liquid. It was almost entirely about smell.
Smell has always mattered to me, I think that a childhood of allergies and near
constant colds made those periods when I could smell precious.And growing up in households where food was
constantly being cooked, cakes baked and pipes smoked but where the actual
physical environment could be grim it was smell rather than sight that made my life richer.

When not afflicted with a cold I
have a keen sense of smell. It was easy for me to identify notes of leather,
bark, petrol, damp feathers and moth balls in expensive wines. I’m not precious
about niffs, even noxious ones can be intriguing. There is a fine line between
nasal beauty and disgust and I have always thought that the best smells have
and edge of decay or body fluids to them. I’m considering them at the moment
because a history of one of the famous wine tasting competitions I was involved
in is shortly being published and because I have also recently been to a few perfume
industry related events. Perfume or wine, the act of deconstructing them is a
very similar process. The major difference is that perfume is ingested in a
different way. It lies upon our skin reacting with our bodily temperatures and is thus transmuted. Wine works its transformation more internally and
corporally. But both affect our mood, behaviour and physiology. Whilst some
experience a graphic physiological synaesthesia response to smell anyone with an ounce of
imagination can make the obvious connections. A wine is a sharp grassy green; a scent
is a warm bronze. The language of wine is imbued with rich deep shades,
leather, pewter, flashing glass and the patinas of old woods. The interiors of
the best bodegas, chateaus and wine merchants reflect this sensual language of
wine, a language of smell supported by taste and vision.

Penhaligon's previous decor.

View of the new Penhaligon's store interior

Scent has a wider range of
ingredients and source materials than wine and is perhaps a more overtly sensual
experience. Yet it seems to me that its visual language has been demeaned. I
know I have a weakness for luxury but that does not exclude simplicity. I love
the scent of Jinko, Cedar and Yuzu, and I love the simple wooden lines, woven
tatami and delicate traced papers that visually accompany it; in my mind at
least. However I find the shiny cheap metallic trim, the polished white.. what
is it; Formica? - the black faux onyx ‘simplicity’ of many perfume
stores/counters utterly depressing.No
one is going to deny the importance of ‘branding’, identity or advertising to
any company but you look back at the elegant illustrations used to advertise
scent in the thirties and compare them to the soft porn photography that is
common currency today (and yes I know I have banged on about this before) and
despair. Overt sex is not sexy nor sensuous nor erotic: it is tacky.

Cornubia, my favourite Penhaligon's scent.

Recently I attended the re-launch
of the Penhaligon’s flagship store in Regent Street which has been redesigned
by Christopher Jenner, who has form due to his work with Diptyche. Penhaligons are heritage brand and particularly good for daytime
scents and male niffs (always had a soft
spot for a finely scented male). Their traditional square cut glass bottles
tied with bows and interesting scent specific labels are established motifs.
The challenge for them as with many ‘traditional’ brands is how to avoid Laura
Ashley style ossification whilst not taking the (not necessarily bad) faintly
Eurotrashy route of Burberry. Their bottles are to some degree an ‘untouchable’
and effective design formula and to some degree sacrosanct.

Interior, note marquetry.

The Regent Street Store has, with
its vintage glass fascia always had a touch of the jewel box about it, I liked the old dark shop too but perhaps it was a little forbidding and had a look that has been adopted by too many other brands. The
current designer appears to have appreciated this, it still looks like a jewel
box but one that has been smuggled into Mayfair via a Victorian lady travellers
travelling chest, with detours to China and the Raj. The colour scheme of Eau
de Nil and purple pink zings and appeals to me intensely. I love that uncertain and
slightly corpse-like green-blue. Despite its Frenchified name it always seems
to me to be peculiarly English: the colour of an Aesthete's jade tie pin, English utilitarian tea cups,
1920’s tea gowns and onyx Deco cigarette lighters. As a counterpoint a Schiaparelli
like pink with a mauvish hue has been used, particularly effectively in the
large pendant lamps hanging from fortuitously high ceilings. These have, in
their turn been decorated with a tribute to English tudor ceiling fretwork. The square shapes of the iconic bottles and
the bows adorning them have been worked into most elements of the store’s
design including the beautifully tiled floors. Besides the entrance the range
is placed in back-lit chamfered boxes for no reason other than to display the
bottles as desirable objects. Yet these are placed in a tactile studded leather
wall which invites touch.

Interior

The overwhelming ambience of the shop
is of an opulent ladies drawing room of the high Edwardian era. This kind of
interior is not unusual, various brands utilise it. Penhaligon’s have staked
their claim to difference by incorporating what could almost be described as a ‘chappist’
approach. Paper labels from perfumes decorate feature walls and things are just a
bit eccentric. This was reflected at the launch by their collaboration with
Hendrick’s gin and the presence of the delightful Kit and one of their always
decorative barmen. Their now established uber-English take on gin cocktails served in the almost ubiquitious tea cups complemented
Penhaligons approach well. And in any case who can argue with good gin,
especially when accompanied by pretty macaroons?

Hendrick's gin cornish cocktail.

Money has been spent on the
redesign in terms of craft, most notably on the floor and the
marquetry walls. Is it just me, or does a properly crafted environment reflect
a properly crafted product? Luxury can be off– putting but efforts have been
made here to counter this by making the store more interactive. The bottles are
arranged traditionally on shelves but in addition there is a table with the
entire range accompanied by sample strips; a kind of ‘taste me’ approach. This
encourages a browsing of scents, of comparison and double checking. Personally
I dislike having a member of staff interceding in my sniffing but I like them
there when I have a question or can’t find something. This is why Liberty's
often get my money, they seem quite tolerant of the customer just getting on
with things.

Penhaligons are sensible to have designed their shop to appeal to
different kinds of customer. In a sense this is ultra-modern, reflecting the
move to niche and personally designed scents at the top end of the market. Yet
is still operates within the ambit of a major commercial brand.It is possible to market democratically
whilst luxuriously and it is possible to use conventional imagery
imaginatively. Shops like Penhaligonsand their attitude to their perfumes and their customers are a standing
challenge to an industry that increasingly relies on a faux puritanical imagery
or pseudo-scientific hygiene fetish to sell products that often deserve
better.It could be countered that a
quality scent doesn’t require excessive adornment but perfume, like wine is a
balm and excitement to the senses. We have proved resistant to good wine being
stored in cartons or sold in sterile environments, which as it is a food stuff
makes more sense than in the presentation of scent. Penhaligon’s approach suits
their perfumes and the shop is a joy, like suddenly coming across a violet cream
in a box of plain truffles. Certainly the Malabar skin cream I was given makes
me smell rather like a delicious piece of confectionery.

193 comments:

I think it looks great, I'd love to be able to go in for a look around. I think there is something very wrong with my sense of smell and the way my skin reacts because I tend to hate perfume, it doesn't smell to me or on me the way it does to others and I end up thinking much of it stinks! It's most frustrating and unhelpful. Natural scents, like rose and flowers in general, I love but artificial perfumes just don't work for me. The only ones I can use are Lush's Karma and the Violetta from Penhaligons....I have an enormous weakness for violets in any form.....but I can't afford the latter.

Hi Lolly, it might be worth trying one of their skin creams which are cheaper but still highly scented. They know what is in their perfumes, it is quite possibly a particular ingredient irritating you? xx

A very lovely write up, Minna. I recently went in to a Penhaligons for the first time to try the Juniper Sling, assuming that it would be my favourite. Whilst I did find it much to my taste, the one that best suited me best was in fact the Eau de Cologne (I'm sure you know, a traditionally masculine scent). However, I think it is something I will just have to lust after at over £100 a bottle!

That's actually a good idea, thanks. It's not so much irritating....although I do have sensitive skin....as my just being weird when it comes to how I perceive smells! For a good part of my life I have smelled things that aren't actually there. It can be anything, but usually not unpleasant, fortunately. Very odd.

I'm just like you - rose or violet and that's it. In the past my husband, bless him, insisted on buying all manner of perfumes for me but I just couldn't bear to smell them, let alone wear them. Not that I felt able to be so blunt to him!

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